


focus on the silence

by earlymorningechoes



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-23
Updated: 2013-05-23
Packaged: 2017-12-12 17:27:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/814114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/earlymorningechoes/pseuds/earlymorningechoes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clara wasn't sure when it happened. Just that one day, as she stared dreamily out the window, she realized that she was no longer dreaming about the girl at the shop or that actress in that movie.</p>
<p>She was dreaming about the Doctor. And that made life infinitely more complicated.</p>
            </blockquote>





	focus on the silence

**Author's Note:**

> Story inspired by a meme on tumblr: send me a song and I'll attempt to write a fic summary for my OTP. I was given "99 Problems" by ameliaearharts, and this is what became of that.
> 
> Takes place between Nightmare in Silver and The Name of the Doctor.
> 
> We know that Oswin was into girls, so why not modern Clara?

     Tuesday evening. It’s become routine for Clara that, after she’s put Artie to bed and fought with Angie about her algebra homework for the umpteenth time, that she allows herself some time alone with her _101 Places to See_ book, time she hasn’t really allowed herself since she was sixteen years old. She’ll curl up in the window seat, smiling softly at the memory of the day she poked her head out of the window to inquire after the strange and gangly man who’d shown up on their doorstep in monk’s robes.

     In the light of the nearly-broken streetlight, flickering unevenly across the open page in her lap, Clara’s mind wanders away from the already-expanding list of tasks she has to accomplish Wednesday before she heads off to some new and wondrous place with the Doctor. Somewhere that the authors of her book could never have thought to imagine, let alone visit.

     Her fingers trace absentmindedly along the edge of an illustration depicting the Statue of Liberty, the spine of the book cracked from being opened to this page so many times. An emblem of America, no longer the location of her dreams but still the key to a mountain of memories, of her mother, her first girlfriend, the first place she understood that wasn’t actually in Lancashire. The knowledge imparted of America, of places like New York City and Los Angeles, by her mother as a child had fueled her desire to travel, to discover the secrets of places new and old, to meet people she might see only once in her entire life.

     In the past few months, her understanding of her desire has both broadened considerably and narrowed sharply. Still tracing the drawing underneath her fingers, her thoughts wander to the big blue box and the strange man that will show up sometime in the next day to whisk her away to some unknown corner of the universe that she will struggle to comprehend. She’s finally not always at odds with the TARDIS, having attempted to talk to the ship in order to appease the Doctor and discovered that the infinite ship is not always the grumpy old cow she’d imagined. Flying to save the Doctor from the pocket universe seems to have changed the situation a bit, and Clara’s glad every time she steps into the ship, where happier sounds have begun to greet her.

     The mundane step-by-step schedule she has set for herself does not feel so boring as she mentally walks her way through it, stopping at each point to laugh internally at how the Doctor would respond to her routine. She turns the page in the book, ending up on a picture of the Grand Canyon, and suddenly she hears a quiet voice at her bedroom door.

     “Clara?” says the voice, causing her to jump slightly before she realizes it’s just Artie, his footsteps muffled by a pair of slippers shaped like cars. She slides off the window seat and towards her charge, drawing him into a quick hug as she asks him what’s wrong.

     “Nightmare,” he answers, clinging to her for much longer than she’s used to from him. When he lets go, she takes his hand and they head for the kitchen, talking in hushed tones as they pass Angie’s room. He explains quietly, something about lion-headed dragons chasing him through the schoolyard after lessons. After a glass of warm milk, his eyes begin to droop and Clara ushers him back into bed, tucking him in with his favorite teddy bear before moving back to her window seat and her book, her thoughts more focused on the earthly places this time before she finally climbs into bed, dreams swirling with a multitude of memories and ideas she isn’t always quite sure she understands.

\-----------

     The next morning, after fighting with Angie about algebra all over again, Clara puts her _Carmen_ CD on to play as she sets about working, the music and the tasks keeping her mind occupied so well that she jumps when there’s a knock at the door. After she waits a moment, the knock becomes much more insistent, and she knows the Doctor’s come in his big blue box to whisk her away.

     As she turns off the music and opens the front door, his gangly frame is leaning against the doorjamb, his comfort in the situation obvious as a smile stretches across Clara’s face. He reaches out a hand to her and turns to walk back towards the TARDIS, standing conspicuously in the driveway, but she gives his hand a tug and he turns back around to her.

     “I haven’t done the washing,” she says, expecting him to follow her inside when she reenters the hallway, but he’s still standing at the front door once she reaches the laundry room.

     “It’s a time machine!” he says, his head tilted sideways in confusion. “You can do the washing when we get back!”

     Clara shakes her head firmly. “I want to finish up now, before we go,” she tells him, and he finally follows her down the hallway and into the tiny closet-sized room that houses the washing machine. She’s never realized how small the room is with someone else inside, and she accidentally elbows him a few times as she’s throwing clothes in and finding the soap (which someone seems to have hidden away from her and takes a few more minutes to find than she expected). Once finished, she turns to walk into the kitchen.

     “I’ll make us tea while we wait,” she says, stepping out and again expecting him to follow her. Once she’s put the kettle on and found the tea again (which Angie seems to be moving on purpose, simply to annoy her), she realizes that he hasn’t. Rolling her eyes, she opens the door again and is met by a mass of bubbles that reaches about to her knees.

     “Doctor!” she exclaims, stepping back as the bubbles begin to spill out into the kitchen. He looks up sheepishly, holding the sopping box of soap in his hands.

     “I opened it up to look inside, and you left the box on the side here, and I knocked it over, and I couldn’t get it back…” Babbling, he sets the box down on the shelf and attempts to make his way towards her, scattering bubbles all around him.

     All of a sudden, Clara scoops up an armful of the suds and lobs them in the Doctor’s direction. They latch onto his tweed jacket as his mouth drops open, sheepishness turning to shock as Clara begins to giggle wildly. She reaches down to grab another armful of bubbles, but she’s met with a mass of them to the face as the Doctor catches on to the game. A handful gets inside her mouth and she chokes for a moment, back to giggling in an instant.

     Bubbles fly through the air in the tiny room until both Clara and the Doctor are covered in dripping white residue. Eventually Clara steps over and sets the machine to rights, still unable to restrain her giggles as she returns to the kitchen and reheats the tea. This time the time lord does follow her, settling into one of the kitchen chairs as she grins at him from the counter.

     “Where are we headed today?” she asks, sipping from her mug as she detangles her hair. His resulting grin nearly splits his face in two as he mirrors her and sips from his own mug.

     “We’re going to The Park!” he shouts, nearly spilling his tea as he jumps up and grabs her hands, twirling her around so that her hair fans out over her shoulders.

     “What, like the park down the road?” she asks incredulously, side-eying him as she steps back and returns to her tea. He shakes his head vigorously.

     “No, the planet called The Park!” he says, as if she should understand him already. When she raises an eyebrow and says nothing in response, he sighs and carries on.

     “Just for a slow day. No one actually lives there, it’s basically a garden about two thousand years in the future off on the other side of the galaxy,” he tells her, becoming more animated as he talks. “We can walk and explore and just see what’s different, yeah?”

     Still skeptical of his plan, Clara shrugs off her doubts and decides to leave the rest of the washing for when they return. She sets the teacups in the sink and takes the arm he offers her, grabbing her shoulder bag from the hall table as they exit. They enter the TARDIS and the Doctor begins flipping switches, Clara leaning on the bars and glancing around the console room, still always awed when she first enters the dimension-defying ship.

     “To The Park!” the Doctor shouts, flipping the last switch into place as Clara leans against the bars, another smile turning up the corners of her mouth as she watches his gangly limbs flail about the console, sending them hurtling through time and space to land safely on a planet years and light-years away.

\-----------

     After a swirling tour of a planet designed to look entirely like the Buckingham Palace gardens, Clara finds herself stepping out of the TARDIS again in the evening, stars twinkling above her as she shouts, “Goodbye, Doctor! See you Sunday!”

     “Hopefully!” he shouts back, the word cut off as the door shuts and Clara’s laughter sounds again. She steps back into the house, falling back into her daily routine as she hangs the washing out and goes through the cabinets to write out the shopping list for the next day. Up above her she can hear the Maitlands getting ready for bed, Angie complaining that everyone else in her class doesn’t have to deal with an overly-strict nanny as Mr. Maitland gently steers her towards finishing this evening’s homework set.

     The smile still touching her face, Clara heads upstairs and tells Artie good night and gives nods to Angie and Mr. Maitland. Changing into her nightgown, she curls up on the window seat again, bathed in the glow of the flickering streetlight. Her feet peek over the edge of the seat as she remembers letting them dangle in one of the many fountains on their trip, a peaceful moment before the Doctor decided to catch her unawares and splash her. They’d spent the next few minutes getting one another soaked before traipsing back to the TARDIS to change, teasing and laughing the entire way.

     Memories dance across her mind’s eye as she traces a finger across the windowsill, noting offhandedly that she should dust in the morning. Moments from poking her head out her bedroom window to find him waiting in the drive to taking Angie and Artie to a deserted old amusement park filled with Cybermen play like movies in her brain, picture-perfect recall of the Doctor and his funny bowtie.

     For a while she just sits and remembers. But suddenly her thoughts begin to shift, moving away from pure memory and into her imagination. She can’t wait to discover where they’re going to next (a rousing adventure in some obscure galaxy or another relatively sedate planet, she doesn’t care which), and she can’t stop remembering the touch of his fingers on hers, or his fingers in her hair.

     She hasn’t thought like this in a long time. She can’t remember ever thinking this way about someone _male._

     She stands up, hands resting on either side of the window as she gazes down into the front garden, the TARDIS materializing in her thoughts. “My Doctor,” she whispers, unsure of where the words come from but sure they are right.

\-----------

     The next few days pass in a blur. Same old, same old tasks and routine: the kids have school, homework, friends, arguments, the whole lot, and Clara keeps track of their million directions and makes sure they’re fed before they decide to climb the tallest tree on the block. But once Sunday comes, the kids are packed off to Gran’s for the day, and Clara paces back and forth, back and forth along the hallway until she hears the familiar sounds outside. She’s out the door before he can knock, shoulder bag clunking against her back as she rushes over to the TARDIS.

     “Hello!” he says, bright and cheery, with his gangly arms flung into the air in excitement. She pushes past him to get inside the doors, leaning against the console in a way that causes him to side-eye her and wish he had someone to call because she’s got her serious face on.

     “Do you think I’m pretty?” she asks, the same question she asked to make sure the Cyberplanner was gone. He’s completely taken aback and leans on the bars across from her, studying her.

     “No,” he answers automatically, repeating the line he’s already fed her. “You’re too short, and bossy, and your nose is all funny.” He moves away from the bar, pretending to be intent on setting the coordinates for their next trip, but instead his head is spinning with her question. _Why did she ask it again?_

     It’s quiet for a moment, the only sounds the clicking of switches and the familiar rumble of engines somewhere deep inside the ship. He chooses to turn back around to her, sure it’s okay to do so, but suddenly she is right in front of him, hands reaching up to his shoulders, and suddenly he is leaning down to compensate for her height, and they are kissing, kissing, and he’s not sure how it happened and even less sure he wants it to stop.

     They break apart, and the Doctor’s cheeks flush red, and Clara rubs her palms on her skirt. It feels as if the air is buzzing as the Doctor clears his throat. Clara cuts him off before he can speak.

     “I think you do,” is all she says. Mouth dropping open, he gapes at her, unsure of how to respond to her assertion.

     “You kissed me!” he says, acutely aware of the fact that he doesn’t know what to do with his hands. She smirks, her eyes crinkling, and he can barely keep his face from mirroring hers.

     “You blushed!” she answers, turning on her heel to head back for the console where she was leaning before. He stops dead, remembering where he’s heard those words before: very similar situation, in Victorian London, in 1892.

     She looks over at him, expectant, as he stands with his hands at his sides. When he doesn’t respond to her, she rolls her eyes and places her hands on her hips.

     “Fine,” she says, hitching her bag up on her shoulder and setting off down one of the hallways, one that so far had continued to lead to the library. He shakes his head and shoulders as if he’s knocking dust out of his space and follows her.

     “No, Clara, I…” he starts. She whirls around, hair flying, waiting for him to go on. When he doesn’t, she disappears around the corner, her footsteps echoing around the room.

\-----------

     Clara holes up in the library, a book on mediaeval clothing open on her lap that she is absolutely not reading. She isn’t sure how long she’s been there when the telltale creak of the opening door tells her that the Doctor has followed her in. She doesn’t turn around, listening to his soft footfalls as he slowly approaches her chair. He leans on the back, tangling his fingers in the ends of her hair. She can’t tell what it’s meant to be a gesture of, but it is surprisingly comforting. Reaching behind her shoulder, she grabs his hand and pulls to make him walk around the chair and stand in front of her. Once there, he pulls her up out of the chair, disregarding the book she holds as it slides to the floor. Pulling her into a hug, he rethreads his fingers into her hair. After a minute she relaxes, resting her head on his chest. They stand that way for a moment before breaking apart, Clara bending over to retrieve the book before the Doctor laces his fingers through hers again and starts walking, back towards the console room.

     Clara’s mind spin as they walk, the pressure of the Doctor’s hand in hers both grounding her and adding to the velocity of the thoughts that fly through her head. That encounter definitely did not go the way she’d planned it, and she has no idea how she’s going to follow up on it, and she still has no idea why she feels the way she does at all, but it’s the Doctor. He doesn’t do anything the normal way, and he doesn’t do anything by halves.

     So she looks down at their intertwined hands, and she notices him looking too, and their eyes meet. She knows he’s not going to say anything, and so she doesn’t either. But the mood shifts slightly, and she squeezes his hand, and he smiles.

     And that, his smile, goofy and lopsided and hiding all kinds of secrets that she’s pretty sure she never wants to know about, is enough to tell her that not understanding is not a bad thing, and that for them? Maybe something’s there.


End file.
